Tableau and 1E: Smokin’ Data Transfer at London’s Tobacco Dock

Data is a crucial commodity in modern business, and the ability to utilize it one of the most valuable areas of expertise in any office. Furthermore, it’s a fast evolving area, with continually expanding horizons – and, for the data wizards themselves, continually expanding skills.

This is why for Tableau – world leader in data analysis software – events are a central part of its marketing and customer outreach program.

These take place around the world, and attract tens of thousands of attendees each year.

While they also help to build community and provide an ideal setting for customer networking, Tableau’s events are primarily places people go to learn how to use the latest Tableau software, and it’s difficult to think of many software vendors able to regularly attract so many passionate consumers from around the world.

Indeed, when 1E recently visited a Tableau event (for the first time), at the Tobacco Dock in London, we were quickly impressed. Crowds of cosmopolitan young professionals (data wizards one and all, we presume) drifted between ‘classroom’ set-ups, with row upon row of opened laptops, and chic lounge, café and bar areas. The atmosphere was informal yet studious.

The challenge for the organizers, however, comes from having to ensure that all of these attendees can access Tableau’s latest software, and practice on it. Therefore, every attendant needs to have access to a machine, and every machine needs to have the right software on it.

“This is the first time we’ve tried a solution that allows us to automate the architecture for these events.”- Chris Frickland, Tableau Event Infrastructure Manage, Tableau

The London event took Tableau a step closer to its goal of a touch free conference IT infrastructure. This was thanks in part to 1E Nomad, which allowed Tableau’s event technicians to distribute large amounts of content much more effectively and efficiently than they could using standard SCCM.

Indeed, when 1E poked its head into the event’s IT nerve centre, we found an operation that was coming close (at least) to Chris Frickland’s ideal.

1E loves to see ground-breaking, innovative uses of our software, and this was certainly one of these. With London successfully completed, Tableau’s attention now turns to its flagship annual Tableau Conference 2016 in Austin, where thousands of attendees will be making use of over 4000 laptops covering eleven venues.

“In the past, how we operated conferences didn’t scale well. A lot of manual tasks, a lot of manual processes that required a lot of people. If we need to make changes out in the environment that required large teams and USB keys, flash drives… with [Nomad] we are going to be able to manage it from a central location, push out files, and imaging” – Michael Sainz, Systems Engineer for Tools and Monitoring, Tableau